


After Life

by FreeDaddyMozart



Category: Haikyuu!!, Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternativ Universe - Grim Reapers, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Unhealthy Power Dynamics, kuroo is a guilty guy :/, over all a fun story though :|, people do die but see title
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-06-22 10:13:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15579681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeDaddyMozart/pseuds/FreeDaddyMozart
Summary: For some people there might be Heaven, for some there might be Hell. For Kagami, there definitely is Aomine.Just because you're dead, doesn't mean you get to relax! Kagami and Aomine have souls to find and collect.  Kenma finds himself cornered by Kuroo who offers him a much welcomed out, but obviously hasn't got the best of intentions, and Daichi just wants that grey-haired angel of an office clerk to go out with him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yeah... I'm trying this again. Third time's a charm, right :D
> 
> more tags and relationships to be added.

Taiga knew the drill. Assess the situation, stay as low as possible, breathe through your nose, know your escape routes, keep calm, and wait for help. Taiga knew the drill very well.                       

He  _had_  assessed the situation, and the conclusion he had come to was dire.

His tall frame was pressed to the ground, but his nose was bleeding and the pain in his legs made him suck in sharp, panicked gasps of pungent smoke through clenched teeth.

Even if he were able to lift this damn thing and get up, there was no escape route. This was an old building and the only way out was back down the creaking stairway, the one that he had climbed up a few minutes ago, the one that was currently ablaze just a few feet from where he was laying, lower body trapped under a heavy wardrobe.

As for keeping calm, that was easier said than done with a headset and respirator that had both stopped functioning right after the gas explosion had cut him off from the team, and the very real threat of carbon monoxide poisoning that was likely already working its magic on his body and mind.

In regards to waiting for help, there was no one coming for him. He  _was_  the help.

He knew exactly how many men were in the building with him, even knew their approximate positions. He knew their equipment, their capabilities as a team and as individuals, and he knew now that he had hopelessly miscalculated the situation before heading into this. Fuck.

_Fuck_.

Coughing, he tried once more to wiggle out from under the massive piece of furniture, but the muscles in his arms were trembling with lack of oxygen and fatigue. With a worsening headache he listened for any of his colleagues shouting his name, but between the roaring flames around him and the high-pitched ringing in his ears that had him feeling dizzy, he wasn’t able to make out anything else.

His breaths began to come out even more shallow now and the smoke in his lungs and nose was nauseating. His eyelids were heavy. He held still. Somewhere there was another explosion. The ground shook, and hot dust from the ceiling landed on his back. He waited a few seconds, maybe half a minute.

He was hurting.

_All for nothing_ , he realized coughing weakly, eyes falling shut. He heard a couple of loud cracks and then a crash. The stairway must have finally collapsed. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry and his throat felt swollen.  _All over_ , he thought as he breathed out one last time.

As a firefighter, Taiga had known the drill perfectly well.

 

 

His eyes snapped open almost violently. He was panting as if he had just been sprinting a mile, sweat soaking his clothes and burning in his eyes. People and trees were rushing past him, and he slowed down when he realized he was in fact running. He was at the park only a few minutes south-west from his apartment.

“How…- Whaa!”, Taiga jumped in the air as a rabid looking dog barked at him viscously, its owner bumped into him while dragging the animal past him. “No it’s okay”, Taiga started laughing awkwardly, when he realized the teenager hadn’t even apologized. “Rude little brat”, he muttered and watched the boy leave. His heart was still fluttering.

_Keep calm, you know the drill_. Taiga suddenly felt dizzy.

He walked over to a bench to calm down. He started to shiver now that he wasn’t moving anymore.

_Breathe_ , Taiga told himself, inhaling deeply through his nostrils. He coughed. 

Attempting to check the time and realizing that he must have forgotten his wrist watch at home, he wondered whether his boss had been right about overworking himself. Did stress really do this to people? Taiga noticed that he was not only barefoot and not in his running clothes, but he also couldn’t remember where he was going and where he was coming from for the live of him. Hell, even what date it was.

“Freaky”, he sighed.

“Oh come on. That dog didn’t even reach your knees”, a loud and unpleasant voice sneered.

Taiga snapped his head around, to stare at a dark haired, dark skinned guy, about his height and build that was lounging next to him on the bench, which, Taiga could and would swear, had been empty except for himself up until a few seconds ago.

“Wha- I, what?! I don’t know what you’re-“, Taiga started with a red face (anger, not embarrassment!), but the stranger cut him off by waving his hand dismissively, and telling him that “Whatever, I’m late already.”

“Do I know you?” Taiga asked, confused and annoyed. 

“No”, the other smirked at him derisively, as if Taiga had asked a really stupid question. “But I know you”, he said and opened his black body warmer to start rummaging in his pockets. “ _Of_   you, anyways…Let’s make this quick.”

Make it quick? Was this a robbery? Did Taiga look like somebody who would buy drugs?  _He knows me?_ Taiga started to sweat again.

He could probably take this guy on in a fight if it was necessary, but his limbs felt sore and heavy now that he thought about it.

Something about this guy made him uneasy.

A picture of his arms trembling, failing to push something or somebody off himself appeared in the back of his mind.

_Escape routes_. They were out in open terrain, no danger of being trapped...

Why was he so on edge today? He started to get up.

“You must be confusing me with some other guy. You got the wrong person, I’m not into - “ 

“What the hell are you talking about?” The man yanked him back down by the arm. Instead of some illegal substance or weapon, he pulled out what looked like a little notepad and zipped up his jacket again.

“Um…” dumbfounded Taiga’s body moved back on the bench. An uncomfortable silence set in, the stranger looking at him with a weird expression Taiga wasn’t quite able to place.

An unwelcome jittery sensation was spreading in his stomach and chest. Was he going to throw up? 

“Hm. So it really hasn’t dawned on you yet, huh?” Taiga was asked, but he didn’t know how or what to respond to that, so he just shook his head, mouth slightly opened.

“Guess you don’t seem like the particularly bright type anyways”, the guy said, using the notepad to rub the skin beneath the dark blue strands at the back of his head.

“Hey!” All of a sudden Taiga wasn’t feeling so dizzy anymore. “At least I’m not some shady asshole, pestering strangers at the park!”

“Oh yeah?” Taunting eyebrows were raised in a mocking smile, like the jackass was daring Taiga to escalate the situation.

Taiga got off the bench again, up for the challenge. “Yeah!”

Glaring up at Taiga’s towering form from the bench, the guy seemed to reconsider, which was taking a lot of effort judging by an angry vein on his forehead. He exhaled noisily, no smile or smirk or grin on his dark face anymore.

“Look, I really don’t have time for this right now. I’m not supposed to just rip off any band aids but”, he flipped through his notepad again and cleared his throat, “’all for nothing’ and ‘all over’… Ring any bells for you, big guy?”

_Yes_. “No.”

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry and his throat felt…fine. He breathed out. Then again. He kept breathing.

“You… Um... You mind telling me the time?” he asked hoarsely as the stranger got off the bench as well.

“Three seventeen in the afternoon, plus however long we’ve been talking, November eighth,” a quick glance at the paper in his hand, “and it’s a Thursday.”

Taiga blinked. That couldn’t be right, he was supposed to be at work right now.

_For nothing_.

He cautiously put his hands up to his nose to feel whether it was broken, but nothing felt out of the ordinary and his fingers came back clean, no blood.

_Over_.

The stranger murmured something under his breath.

“I…I think I had a bad dream.” The voice leaving Taiga’s mouth sounded hollow and foreign.

“Did you die in that dream?”

Red eyes met blue ones, and Taiga nodded.

“Then you weren’t dreaming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are much appreciated


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> enter Haikyuu!!

“So…” a hesitant pause, “are you okay?”

“What the fuck,” Taiga had been cowering on the bench and trying not to hyperventilate for the past five minutes or so. “Of course I’m not okay!” His clammy fingers were trembling around his forehead, as his eyes stared blankly at the gravel between his bare feet. The ominous stranger knelt down before him, trying to get Taiga to look at him.

Taiga didn’t want to see, didn’t want to look at this envoy of death. He was desperate to laugh, scream, punch, but simply  _couldn’t_ because a terrible clang had settled in, shaking him to the core. Suddenly he  _knew_. He could hear his heartbeat thrumming in his ears, he felt the cold, uneven surface underneath his feet, he could smell the fallen leaves surrounding him, and saw the shadows of swaying trees on the ground, but he knew, he just knew-

He was no longer alive.

There was a quiet crunch when the stranger shifted and lightly laid a hand on Taiga’s knee. “You know, you seem like the type that needs to feel useful.”

Taiga closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as he straightened his back, hands pressed against his thighs in an attempt to restore a feeling of fortitude. Fools and cowards denied reality. He was no coward and he didn’t want to be a fool. He opened his eyes to watch the other man hum in approval and rise to his feet again.

“Maybe you can help me with something.” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

A cracking  _pop,_  uncomfortably close to his ear, made Kuroo snap back to attention. “Was I boring you?” Hara asked, as he smugly used his teeth to scrape the gum off his lips. Obnoxious fuck.

The ground floor beneath the window Kuroo was looking through was buzzing with motion. Figures, some in white coats, more in dark scrubs, were moving across the corpse-colored linoleum floor, taking measurements and operating equipment under the harsh lighting. They were several floors above the workshop, but Kuroo could still hear the low incessant rumbling of the conveyor belt transporting units around the room and through the whole complex.

Hara’s minty nuisance of a habit had allowed the woman leading a small clipboard-carrying group to escape Kuroo’s attentive gaze.  Annoyed, but not truly irritated about it, Kuroo turned to face the manufacturing director again. He hated not being able to see his eyes, it made the guy even more untrustworthy.

“So basically, you’re telling me she’s doing exactly how I told you she would do,” Kuroo said. He took great pride in finding and grooming the right people for positions that needed filling. This time the job couldn’t have worked out much better.

“A perfect match and she likes it here, too.” Hara confirmed with his back to Kuroo as he was preparing a drink at his desk.  _How?_  Kuroo wondered, strolling across the office to take a seat and accept the glass. There were nice places in Hell but this was not one of them in Kuroo’s opinion. Sure, the science part of it was interesting, but he’d rather confess to the Leviathan himself than work at an assembly line.

 

As he sipped on his drink, the bitter liquid making him cringe slightly, he chided himself for the exaggeration.  _Don’t even joke about that..._  Still, he’d do a lot in order to prevent working under the team of douchebags that Hara Kazuya was part of, each one worse and more troublesome than the last. He emptied his glass and agreed to a refill when it was offered.

Way back when he’d been new to all this and didn’t know Hara, he had been highly suspicious of the fact that the guy never ate or drank anything he offered himself, but now he was used to him preferring mint flavored candy over anything else. Kuroo had never been much of a bubble gum fan himself. The long silence was amplified by Hara’s unsettling haircut that made it impossible for Kuroo to tell what the other man was thinking. Another reason he didn’t like coming here.

“She hasn’t asked for me, has she?” Kuroo wasn't really interested in the answer personally, but still duty-bound to ascertain it anyways. A job was a job, and he had to be certain all pieces where in their place. Best-case scenario, unfinished puzzles meant unfinished paychecks. Worst case? His body in a body bag on its way to the dumpsters.

Hara halted mid-bubble to grin widely. “No,” he said, “she’s got your shtick figured out by now.”  _Took her long enough._

“Looks like she’s in too deep now to do anything against it,” Kuroo smiled unamused. Hara hummed in agreement and leaned forward. When he popped the bubble a little bit of spit sprayed across the desk. Kuroo wanted to get going.

“Anything else?” he asked curtly. Hara didn’t move and Kuroo was done trying to guess what was going on behind that curtain of unhealthy-looking hair. He got up from his seat and emptied the glass to put it back on the desk with a little more force than necessary. As he made to grab his coat, Hara shifted again, apparently done thinking or watching or sleeping or whatever the fuck.

“She says she never wants to see you again.”

Kuroo let out a huff. “You know she won’t.”

Hara stood up as well to let Kuroo out the door.

“You know, you’re a real piece of shit, Tetsurou.”

Kuroo felt his face twitch for a second. He didn’t like that name on those lips. Hara’s tone had been approving? mocking? He tried to read the exposed half of the other’s face and failed. No way of telling.

“And what does that make you,  _Kazuya_?”

Now it was Hara’s turn to laugh coldly. He opened the door to let Kuroo out of the office.

“No one is surprised when  _I_ play dirty.”

“Thanks for the drinks,” came the reply. “And get a new haircut, would ya?”

 

Kuroo had been looking forward to lay low and relax a few days after the completion of his most recent assignment, but his boss already had more work for him. At least this next 'appointment' lived nowhere near the quite literally  _draining_ industrial site he was leaving right now. Small mercies he supposed. He looked at the thin file again. Picking up this guy would be child’s play.  A young spirit all alone in the world, no friends to miss him, unhappy with his life, desperate for an out. Kuroo smirked.

The game would be won before this Kozume kid would even know he was playing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

As it turned out, the stranger didn’t really know his way around Tokyo that well, and since he was in a hurry he’d asked Taiga to bring him to his destination. They were now sitting on a subway headed for Senkawa station.

Before they had left the park, he had needed a few more moments to calm down. It was true that Taiga needed to keep busy, something to do to distract him of the gnawing anxiety. The fact that the stranger became a lot nicer after he’d agreed to help him out, was also an immense help. Though stilted, encouragements like “You’re doing just fine!” and “Everything will be alright dude, I promise!” were what Taiga needed to hear, even if he couldn’t quite believe them. However, realizing that apparently no one could see him, safe for the stranger, almost gave him another panic attack.

Sitting still and listening to the permanent rattle of the train car, was making him feel antsy again, so he tried reengaging the other man in conversation. Apparently, a dead man was running away from the… the reaper, the  _stranger_ , who was yet again flipping through his notepad.

Taiga cleared his throat. “What did you mean when you said he’s, um, ‘roaming the city’?” The man groaned, as if Taiga was being purposefully ignorant. “Like I’ve told you, he’s evidently very set on offing himself and hasn’t yet realized his very first try was successful.”

When a female voice announced that their stop would be the next, he got up and Taiga quickly followed, trying to avoid bumping into a man with a suitcase that had no idea he was right there in front of him.

” He’s been jumping head first off of buildings and running in front of cars for the last forty-eight hours now, 'n' every time I show up, he’s already gone,” the stranger continued with a grimace. “Bastard’s set himself on fire this time.”

Taiga was shocked at that but the stranger didn’t pay him any mind as they stepped off the train. It seemed as though he was recognizing the underground platform, since he didn’t ask Taiga for instructions this time. Instead, he hurriedly moved towards one of the exits in long strides. The recently deceased firefighter was too caught up in keeping up with him, to take note of his surroundings.

“And that all happened because you didn’t get to him in time?” He was panting a little as they were scurrying up the stairs and onto the crowded streets. It had gotten late by now and evening rush hour was beginning. When he stepped on a grid in the ground and quickly pulled his bare foot away in discomfort, he realized that he wasn’t feeling as cold as he would have expected considering the lack of sufficient clothing and his, well, being  _dead_.

“I swear I showed up at his door only like twenty minutes late,” the other man complained, "half an hour max." When he looked back at him, Taiga tried to shake off his accusatory expression. “Don’t try to guilt trip me okay? How was I supposed to know he was so serious about it?” Taiga didn’t have an answer. The stranger scratched his head in thought, “Life just gets in the way sometimes...” Taiga’s eyes widened at him. When it settled in, the other man laughed loudly, “Yeah, I guess that's kinda ironic, huh?”

Taiga felt like he was about to have another breakdown.

They continued on their path. While people made way for the tall, intimidating stranger clad in black, Taiga had to dance around people and was almost pushed onto the road, trying not to have anyone run into him. They had been walking for so long now that Taiga was about to ask why they hadn’t just gotten off at a different station, when he was grabbed by the shoulder and told “this way, we’re close.”

Taiga wondered what would happen to him after they were done. Was he just going to be invisible for the rest of his existence? And how long would that even be? Where did dead people go? He thought about the Halloween costumes of reapers he had seen in America. This one didn’t have a scythe or a cloak or was a skeleton. Was the reaper going to do something with him?  _To_  him? Taiga wasn’t comfortable with these thoughts at all.

“Hey,” he called out, making the other man slow down. Might as well try to fraternize before whatever was going to happen happened. “So uh, what’s your name?” The reaper furrowed his brows, putting up a hand in the space between the two of them.

“Dude, we are so far off protocol already, the less you know about this mess the better.” Taiga was more than a little dumbstruck by that. “There’s not gonna be any Get To Know You games with me.”

Taiga felt like a scolded child as he started to obediently follow the guy again, who was now almost jogging down the sidewalk. Something in the air had changed around them and Taiga could pick up a familiar scent. It smelled acrid and bitter like overheated plastic, melted metal, and charred drywall: A burned-out building, and close.

He sped up, outrunning the stranger in front of him and turning around the corner to confirm his suspicion. It had gotten dark now, and the parts of the three-story building that were still standing were blackened by the fire almost beyond recognition. Taiga still remembered the property, though. How could be possibly forget. There was a sharp inhale behind him. The stranger, his reaper,had caught up to him, and was now looking back and forth between Taiga and the scorched remnants.

“Woah,” he said rubbing a hand over his mouth, “you didn’t happen to die in this particular fire, right?” He hurriedly stepped in front of Taiga, as if to hide the view. “This is just, uh… upsetting to you in general, right?” His voice was getting higher with every word. Taiga was gaping at the scene before him. “A ghost?,” he whispered. “A  _ghost_  did this?”

Just this morning he had been rushing into the now collapsed masses of concrete with the others. He recalled the confusion about it not being an electric fire as suspected. He had insisted on checking the upstairs to be sure everybody had left the building. It was his role to take the lead, so he did. An explosion, and then everything went to hell.

“Technically, he’s not a ghost just yet,” the stranger said, and Taiga wasn’t sure whether he was being asked or told. He tore his eyes away from the burned remains of his own grave and stared at the other man. Realization washed over him in hot waves.

“You were late!”

The reaper looked almost pale, raising his hands defensively.

“Hey look man, mistakes were made, ok?  I –” There was a loud  _whump,_  when Taiga’s fist connected with his cheekbone. The blow made him stumble backwards but didn’t knock him down, which Taiga might have been impressed by, if he wasn’t this furious. He charged again, shoving his opponent to the ground and pulling his fist back to strike again. The man beneath him cursed and before Taiga’s fist could smash into him again, he shot up with his upper body to head-butt Taiga right between the eyes.

Both men were groaning and writhing on the ground now. “Fuck!” Taiga heard the other moan in pain, “I think I’m bleeding.”

“Good,” Taiga spit out, feeling his own head throb violently. He sat back up again, ready to attack once more, when he heard a teary whimper. It weirded him out at first because he thought the stranger had started crying, but he quickly realized that it was coming from somewhere along the edges of the collapsed construction. He called out and the sobbing stopped but nobody answered. The reaper hastily got up, slightly swaying in his steps, and hissed at him to “stay right where the fuck you are,” before walking up to where they could still make out sniffing.

Taiga wasn’t done yelling and punching, however, and followed the guy yet again, but the sight of the pitiful man the stranger was all but yanking out from behind a charred wall, made him halt. “Gotcha, you fuck,” he declared victoriously. “Please! D-Don’t –,” the man begged, obviously terrified by the air of violence surrounding the three of them, as he was grabbed by the collar and dragged across the ground towards Taiga.

“Shut up!” The stranger bellowed as Taiga started to protest. “Enough! I’m done!” The reaper extended his free hand towards Taigas chest, and before Taiga could warn him not to put his hands on him, he felt a strange pull on his innards, as though he was being sucked in by a vacuum cleaner belly first. Before his mind could form another thought, everything went black.

 

Daiki let out a frustrated sigh. That asshole had known how to throw a punch! He probed the inner side of his cheek where he had bitten himself and hissed at the pain, then let the hand drop to wipe the bloody finger off on his jeans. Half of his face was getting repulsively hot, skin tautening uncomfortably as the flesh beneath it began to swell. He had about half an hour to get to some one-horse town somewhere in Nagano Prefecture for his next reaping, and he hadn’t even had time for lunch yet. He sent away the squirming soul he was still grabbing onto by the collar unceremoniously. Hopefully this next one didn’t start running for the hills after ten minutes without a baby sitter.  _Jeez._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a heads up: this will be mostly be an AoKaga fic, with some KuroKen and just a little DaiSuga on the side.
> 
> ps: comments make my day


	3. Chapter 3

Kuroo patiently watched Kozume’s shape trudging down one of the roofed pathways enclosing the little courtyard he was sitting in. As the sound of his steps grew quieter and was eventually completely drowned out by the steady rushing of the rain, Kuroo got up from his bench and tightened his jacket around him. He stepped onto the wooden planks of the walkway and followed it down the opposite direction.

He looked at his watch. Kozume would likely be done in about three to four hours. At this strolling pace, it would take him about twenty-five minutes to get to the apartment building. When he hopped over a large gully and crossed the street to walk past the coffee vending machine outside the run-down convenient store on the way, he had to smile to himself. There was no rush.

On the whole way, he didn’t see a single person outside. Not that it was much of a surprise. Few people lived here anyways, there was never any sun, and the rain had either washed out or made what little soil there was infertile, so there wasn’t much to look at in terms of greenery, either. When people left their buildings here, it was because they had to be somewhere. Not a lot of recreational leg stretching going on around here.

Kuroo could see the apartment complex now, and pulled the hood of his sweater further down his face. Better safe than sorry, right? It was unlikely that he’d come across any neighbors, though. And even if: in a place like this, people tended to mind their own business. He almost pitied the kid as he climbed up the steps and went through the entrance doors. No one had even bothered to lock ‘em.

Inside, he was looking at an old worn stair case and a –  _holy shit!_ , a running, working paternoster lift.  How the Big Upstairs could care this little about the upkeep of a building their own public servants lived in, was beyond his fucking comprehension.

“On second thought,” he hopped into the antiquated thing, “this is kinda fun.”

He stepped out when the rattling elevator reached Kozume’s floor. Still no one in sight. He did hear the sound of a radio or two, and somebody clanking with dishes when he passed down the hallway though. He stopped on somebody’s doormat and carefully took off his wet shoes. He was close now.  _443… 445… 447…_ this was the one. Apartment number  _449_.

Kuroo got out his lockpick and within seconds there was a click and he was inside the apartment. He quietly closed the door behind him and put his shoes down in the genkan area, wet soles up. He stepped up onto the floor and looked around.

He was standing in a messy one-room apartment. As he walked further into the room, his foot hit an empty coffee can on the ground. It rolled across the floor and disappeared beneath the cluttered desk next to the apartment's only window. His eyes landed on the trash can between the desk and the unmade bed as he followed the can's path. It was overflowing with cans, paper and plastic wrappers. 

 _Tsk, tsk, tsk_ , Kuroo shook his head with mock chagrin.

When he reached beneath the desk to pick up the can, he noticed a shoe box hidden under the bed at the other end of the wall.

He retrieved the can and put it right back on the floor where it had been left before, put on his gloves and headed to the bed.

_Time to tell me all your secrets, Kozume._

There was a dust free area under the bed, creating a short path right to the box that told Kuroo Kozume had pulled it out not too long ago. Careful not to change the shape of the area by touching any of the dust that formed its edges, he got the box out from under the bed and opened it.

Oh, the disappointment that gripped his heart when all he found was a bunch of game cases inside... Well, he'd already known the kid didn’t go anywhere without that portable console of his. He stepped back to the desk and found another case on top of the chaos of papers, pens and empty dishes. This one was opened and empty. He picked it up and turned it in his hand. On the cover it had some people holding swords and floating in the sky on some sort platform.

_PSP, huh?_

Still holding the box, he put the empty case back on the desk, and turned his attention to the posters on the wall over the bed instead. All of them had mostly dark color schemes, with a few streaks of neon and bright red here and there. Most of them seemed to be depicting the same object.

A pale guy with dark hair and darker rings under his big eyes. He was shirtless, smoking a cigarette in one, taking off his glasses and looking at Kuroo in black and white in another. Another one showed him kneeling on the floor with an irritated look on his face and an arrow stuck in his neck. Here he was lying on a bed, his left hand in his pants while on the phone with somebody, there he seemed to be getting molested by some sort of giant cat.

_…Alright…_

The biggest poster was by another artist. It was the face of a kid with eyes red from crying as he was getting his vampire teeth pulled out by a bunch of machinery.

_Yikes._

Kozume had looked really cute from afar, and Kuroo sincerely hoped that he didn’t turn out to be some kind of psycho freak. 

Then again, he turned to look out the window, this place would make anybody lose their mind after a while.

Rain – cold, heavy, and constant – was pattering against the glass and prevented Kuroo from recognizing anything beyond a distance of two dozen meters away. Rain. Loud, never ending, and salty.

High above him, an ancient force had once closed the giant portal that had been connecting this realm of Limbo with the bottom of the Sea of Japan. The barrier was keeping the water masses from crashing down and drowning everybody that waited out their miserable existence down here.

That ancient, raw force, however, had disappeared a long time ago, and with the millennia passing, the water pressure had forced a million little breaches to open in the invisible boundary.

Those breaches, were the only portals in Limbo that directly led to the World of the Living without any obstacle. No bureaucracy, no endless hallways, no doors giving off alerts and making those stuck up paper pushers upstairs clench every time anyone passed through.

“One day,” Kuroo looked up at the endless grey skies. One day, the many little breaches would tear and become one big one, and

 _That'll fuck 'em all over real good_.

He tapped against the cold glass with a finger and looked at his reflection that was still holding onto the shoe box. He couldn’t let himself be lulled in by the monotonous drum from outside. Quickly, he put the box back under the bed and checked his watch.

The trash can was next. He took out the cans and wrappers, cautious not to have any potential leftovers drip on the floor. He already knew the one brand of coffee Kozume liked to drink.

Kuroo had been watching him every day for the past two weeks.

Kozume leaves his apartment in the late morning or around noon, and gets a coffee at the vending machine outside the convenient store. Sometimes he starts sipping right away on the way to the portal door at the end of the roofed pathway. Usually though, he needs both of his hands to play with that console. Kuroo had of course known it was a kind of video game, but by now he’d been out of the loop for far too long to be able to tell what kind it was.  _PSP_ , he knew now.

When Kozume comes back after an average of three and a half hours, sometimes he seems to have already eaten, or to not be hungry at all. Sometimes he hides food from outside under his jacket or in his bagpack. The other times he goes into the convenient store. Whichever the case is on any particular day, he uses the vending machine again before he goes home.

All the cans from the trash bin were lined up on the floor now, the wrappers lying on a neat pile next to them. Kuroo was now looking at a handful of scrunched up papers.

Kozume likes to spend more time outside than he is supposed to officially, but hey, which reaper doesn’t. If Kuroo had the privilege of leaving the Afterlife almost every day, he’d be damn sure to stretch the boundaries, as well.  _And of course_ , Kuroo’s gaze fell on the box under the bed,  _he can’t charge that PSP thing when he’s here_.

Electricity in Limbo was crazy expensive and outlets usually weren’t accessible. Even if it wasn’t and even if they were, in an older-than-dirt building like this, and what with all the rain… why bother.

Most of the papers seemed positively useless, except for one. It was a letter from a week ago. An official-looking one. He straightened out the crunched up paper.

_Kozume-san,_

_the Office of Dipshits and Arid Cunts blah blah blah…_

_Sorry to inform you – request can not be met at this time, yadi-yadi-ya.._

_No current openings available… Etcetera...:_

_We appreciate your service._

“Sure you do.”                                                                                                                   

It was an answer to Kozume’s request to switch jobs and housing. They wouddn't let him do either. Kuroo had found a letter exactly like this one just a week ago when he had been dumpster diving outside Kozume’s apartment. At least two requests in a little over a month…The last one had been dated back another couple of weeks ago. From what it looked like, Kozume couldn’t stand it here for one more day. Good thing Kuroo was here to play the hero.

 _Tomorrow then,_ he decided, as he headed up the empty street after he had left the shoddy apartment complex. He looked at his watch when he reached the convenient store. More than enough time for a drink.

When he straightened up from retrieving the iced coffee, he tapped against the side of the machine twice, grinning at his reflection in the glass.

He hurried across the street and ran to the next roofed section, leaving the vending machine and the run-down convenient store further behind him with every splashing step he took.

He clicked open his can and took a sip.

_Tomorrow we meet, Kozume._

 

* * *

 

 

Taiga’s chest was slowly rising and falling as he felt his breath flow through his nose, into his body, and back out again. Shifting, he realized he was in a seating position, shoulders relaxed and hands resting in his lap. From just sitting it was difficult to tell, but somehow he felt a little lighter than usual. His back was warm, and as he let his head sink to the side, his face was pressed against something soft.

Somewhere water was steadily gurgling, inviting him to let himself drop deeper into the welcoming warmth and drift off again. Though not particularly tired, he was happy to just doze like this, peaceful and pleasantly carefree. There was a subtle flowery scent in the air that reminded him of sunny afternoons in the backyard of Tatsuya’s host family, way back before they had both returned to Japan. Taiga smiled as he spread his legs to make himself even more comfortable.

The sound of a door falling shut and a drawn-out “ _Shhhh”_  however, made his eyes flutter open. Taiga grimaced as a dull ache set in. He was surrounded by complete darkness, unable to make out any shapes or even a little bit of light. It obviously wasn’t time to get up yet. He pulled his arms across his chest and turned to the side to fall asleep again, but the throbbing behind his eyes was making it impossible to truly relax now. When he attempted to rub his eyelids to ease the soreness, his fingers connected with silky fabric. Somebody had put a sleep mask on his face. It came off with a soft ripping sound when Taiga yanked it away and sat up straight.

Across him , a woman, maybe his mother’s age, was sleeping in a comfy green armchair. There were two more chairs to her sides, each separated by a small table with different kinds of flower arangements on top. As he turned his head, he discovered that he himself was sitting in another row of three. The chair immediately to his left was empty, but the one after that seated a man that was fumbling with the hem of his sleeve. They were both wearing something close to pajamas. Taiga looked down at his own clothes. The long-sleeved shirt was too big for him, with the neck line extending past his collarbones. He was wearing a pair of sand-colored sweatpants, and someone had provided him with turquoise velour slippers. He frowned. None of these items belonged to him.

Somebody coughed and he turned his head to see that the room was divided by a half wall, behind which Taiga caught sight of more flowers and armchairs with people in them, most of them asleep with masks on. He noticed a framed poster next to a double door at the other end of the room. It showed a man and a woman in nice beige cardigans both smiling and having one arm draped across an elderly man’s shoulders, who was standing and laughing in their middle, a sleeping mask dangling from his neck. Even though it must have been a couple of sizes smaller, since it was fitting a lot better, Taiga could easily see the old man was wearing the same shirt he was wearing. The first line of kanji on the bottom of the poster read “A New Beginning”.  He quickly discovered similar posters along the rest of the wall. “New Friends, Second Chances”, and “There’s More to Live Than Living”, and “We’re Happy to Have You.”

This seemed to be some sort of waiting room.

Just as he was about to speak to the man next to him, the double doors opened and two men in violet polo shirts pushed in a woman on a wheelchair who, too, had a mask over her face. After the three moved across the room, Taiga watched the men lift the unconscious figure into one of the vacant green armchairs. His gaze followed them leaving through the doors again, and distracted as he was, he jumped a little as he heard a quiet, yet clear voice call his name.

“Kagami-san, would you please follow me?”

He turned his head and deflated right back into his seat, stunned. In front of him, the speaker had one arm extended to the side, pointing at another door to the side and gave Taiga a reassuring nod. Taiga however, was having immense difficulty to register, never mind act upon, any kind of silent suggestions right now.

His open-mouthed stare was met by dark brown eyes, warm and gentle in the dim lighting of the room, and an enchanting smile that made his heart feel like a swarm of disoriented butterflies was trapped inside. The man's lithe form was tastefully outlined by a white shirt under a beige pullover that harmonized nicely with his grey hair, a color that was directly contradicted by his smooth, youthful skin.

The burn in his eyes worsened from staring, and he had to tear them away and blink to prevent them from getting watery. ‘Breathtaking’ was exactly the right word for this man who appeared to have descended right down form the heights of Taiga's sweetest dreams.

"To my office, Kagami-san. Please follow me."

Taiga stumbled to his feet a little too fast and it made him dizzy. Before any sort of lamentation could form in his mind, the man was talking again.

“Oh my,” he had to raise his head to flash Taiga another dazzling smile. “You’re really tall!”

Thanking his father for every inch he had inherited, he started waving his hands and laughing nervously mumbling about how he was nothing special, while simultaneously straightening his back to appear even taller. The man motioned for Taiga to follow him, as he led him out of the waiting room through a small hallway and into a cozy office at the other side. He quickly sat down when the soft-eyed beauty offered him a seat and watched as he stepped around the desk and sat down himself.

Here under the bright light, the man looked even better than he had in the dim lighting of the waiting room. Taiga was suddenly very happy that the desk was hiding his grandpa-pants and slippers.

As this marvelous proof of the divine was going through one of the drawers, his skin seemed to emit a creamy glow. When he sat back up and pushed a strand of hair behind his ear, Taiga noticed a small beauty mark under his eye. He felt his face getting hot and swallowed.

“Let’s get started, yes?” said the man in front of him, scooting closer and folding his hands on the desk. “How are you feeling Kagami-san?”

“Great!” Taiga sputtered, “Very great! How are you feeling?”

The man just gave him a sad little smile, which made Taiga even more nervous. “Kagami-san…” he took hold of Taiga’s hand and gently squeezed it. “I'm sorry to tell you that you died three days ago.”

Taiga let out a shaky breath he didn’t know he had been holding and let his gaze wander from their hands, over the other man’s arm, and to his face.

“So, you really are an angel then?”

He watched the man’s eyes widen in surprise before a quick laugh, light and mellow, escaped him.

“Oh, no,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “I’m little more than a file clerk. You’re here to have a place assigned to you. This is the Spirit Registration Office, Kagami-san. My name is Sugawara Koushi, Suga’s fine.”

Taiga leaned back as well, trying to make sense of this information.

“Your eyes should stop hurting in a while," Sugawara continued. "Would you like some tea while I get you settled?”

Tea was the furthest thing from his mind right now, but he saw that Sugawara had already poured him a cup so he accepted. When Sugawara turned with his chair and rolled over to a big file cabinet behind the desk, Taiga let his gaze wander across the room for a moment.

Next to a polka dotted box of tissues on the desk, was a wooden name plate that read  _Sugawara Koushi, Spirit Registration_  in neat, silver characters. Behind the desk, there was a small bookshelf along with more cabinets and boxes Sugawara was currently browsing in. On Taiga's right-hand side there was a low cupboard with another vase with a colorful bouquet and something that looked like a birdhouse connected to a small wooden funnel on top of it. It looked as if...confetti was flowing out of it, but after a blink it was gone. Instead, his eyes fell on a second door to the left that likely lead to the next office. He reluctantly sipped his tea, glad it was only a small cup since there was no sugar in it.

Sugawara eventually turned around again, smiling and pushing his chair back to the desk. He had assembled a handful of papers and was now putting them into a folder, which Taiga was sure had his name on it.

“And what’s tha-?” Taiga started and tried to have a better look at the pages, but the characters where upside down to him and when he looked at the beautiful face in front of him again, he sat up in surprise at Sugawara’s serious expression, lips pursed and eyebrows knit in concentration, as his eyes, now glinting with determination, skimmed over the pages.

In a matter of seconds, he had finished reading, reached for a pallet of different colored pads from which he chose the black ink, and pressed a big wooden stamper onto the front page with a loud knock that rang of fatality.

Taiga was reminded of a judge’s gavel sounding after the verdict had been reached, and squirmed in his chair. The loud whack seemed to have shattered his rose-colored glasses just a little bit. Taiga rubbed at his hurting eyes again.

“Wonderful,” Sugawara said, smiling sweetly across the desk again. “This is for your new mentor slash supervisor. His name is Aomine Daiki, and he’ll take good care of you I’m certain.” He closed the folder and put it into an envelope before pulling out a thin but solid-looking plastic casing from under his desk and standing up.

 _Daiki_ … What a nice name.

"Supervisor?"

Taking another sip of unsweetened tea, Taiga watched Sugawara open an inconspicuous little metal door on the wall that he suspected to hide some sort of shaft, like a flue maybe, and letting the envelope disappear behind it.

"Right," Sugawara said sitting down behind his desk again. "You've been assigned to the Department of Soul Collection and Spirit Transit, which is to say you were chosen to be a reaper. Ah, please drink some more!"

Taiga nodded numbly, and pressed the cup against his lips. He blinked owlishly at Sugawara’s swift hands, as he presented a number of colorful brochures that he laid down on the desk in front of him.

"In our experience, the Reaping Program yields best results through extensive, full-time, one-on-one training," Sugawara continued. "Therefore all new apprentices are housed with their supervisors in order to learn the trade, as well as for assimilation purposes. If you would have a look at the second double page here," he directed Taiga's wide eyes at a network diagram parted into three main columns in one of the brochures. "Just to give you a brief overview, Kagami-san, here are all the departments working on soul and spirit management." He tapped a finger on a black framed text bubble that read  _"Soul Collection and Spirit Transit (LW/H)"_ in small characters. Taiga's eyes followed as the finger traced upwards towards the columns title, circling it. "As you can see, reapers' tasks primarily focus on the world of the living, but your new residence is situated within Limbo of course. The current administration..."

Taiga was beginning to zone out. He wanted to listen to the pretty man across the desk, but all this information seemed awfully...well, insane. He took another sip from his cup and thought that this particular brand of tea seemed to be growing on him. Taiga had never been one for tea, much less of the unsweetened variety, but oddly enough, this drink seemed special somehow.

His gaze fell on the bizarre birdhouse on their side once more and this time he was certain he saw big fluffy confetti petals coming out of it. One or two at a time, what seemed like every half minute or so, they slowly glid out of the little hole and while most of them appeared to be sucked in by air flow along the wall to the same metal door the envelope had been passed through, several pieces landed in or around the wooden funnel right next to the birdhouse.

"'s there something in this tea?"

"Hmm?" Sugawara stopped his briefing to smile innocently at Taiga.

"Er, never mind. Sorry..."

He set his cup down and Sugawara continued unperturbed. "As I was saying, such initial turbulences are to be expected, but your supervisor is instructed to handle any such problems before they arise as they say," he laughed a little, startling Taiga out of his daze. He nodded and awkwardly smiled back at the clerk.

"Great," Sugawara declared and pulled out a plain drawstring bag from behind his desk, and a lanyard with a single key from one of the drawers.

"In here," he pressed the bag to Taiga's chest, "are some basic toiletries for your first few days, and this," he handed him the string, "is your own personal key."

He beamed at him as if he had just handed him the key to the city, not a fantastically normal —although slightly battered-looking— key on a string that made him feel like a preschooler.

“Thank you,” he managed a polite smile.

"Oh, you're too sweet," Sugawara giggled, “don’t worry now. It’ll all turn out just right, I promise.” He motioned for Taiga to get up.

Still clutching the bag and key to his chest, he stumbled to his feet and turned towards the second door, where Sugawara was waiting now.

"Okay. If there's no more questions now, there's a hallway on the other side of this door,” Sugawara's words were hastier now than before and his eyes were fixed on his own hand on the door knob. "I can’t come with you, but one of the doors will be calling to you, do not go through the others, you'll get lost.  Your new mentor will be waiting on the other side. That's all.”

He placed a gentle but firm hand on Taiga’s lower back, and pushed him into the hallway. The last thing Taiga heard was a chipper, probably well-practiced-to-the-point-of-reflex, “Welcome to the afterlife, Kagami-san," and then the door fell shut behind him.

Baffled, Taiga was facing a blue marble hallway with maybe two dozen white doors.

“ _What?_ ” he couldn’t help but wonder out loud.

Clutching the bag and the envelope in his hands, he looked down at his slippers and oversized shirt.

There were no signs or any other indication for him through which door he was meant to go to meet this new supervisor that was supposed to be awaiting him. Maybe he was just supposed to wait here?

As the seconds went by Taiga realized that the wavy marble pattern was slowly moving across the stone. He looked for a light source or maybe a projector that was causing the effect, but he couldn’t find anything. The walls themselves seemed to be glowing. He moved closer to knock against the surface, but there was no hollow sound like what he would have expected from some sort of screen. The wall was cold and massive, and a second knock didn’t make any more noise than the first one had.

Fascinated, Taiga watched the pattern change beneath his hand, slowly drifting over the stone as though he was at the bottom of a pool with the water shimmering vividly under the sun.

After another moment alone in the eerie silence, Taiga decided to just go back into the office and wait there or ask for directions.

He let his hand slide off the wall and turned around to see that the door to Sugawara’s office was gone. The envelope and the key dropped to the floor as he stared down the other end of the hallway.

“Hello?” he called out, but he seemed to be alone with his echo.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like every chapter so far has ended a little cliffhangery... I'm trying not to do it, but it sort of always ends up this way, haha. i hope it's not too annoying for you :s
> 
> please let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please mind the changed rating and additional tags <3

Still clutching the bag, he tried to open the closest door to find it was locked. He tried the next one, and the next one…No success. He listened for sounds coming from behind the doors but all he could hear was his own breathing.

Remembering the lanyard he had been given, he quickly went back to pick it up together with the envelope, only to realize that none of the doors had locks.

He started walking. He passed door after identical door on each side of the hallway. Somewhere there had to be something he could work with! He checked four or five more doors at random, becoming more aggressive with each failed attempt until he tried to kick in the sixth one, failing once again. Was this what eternity looked like? Closed doors, without locks, rendering the one key he had worthless?

When he made to put the useless lanyard around his neck, he noticed with a pang to his chest that the chain with Tatsuya’s ring was missing. He always took it off and put it inside a pocket in his turnout jacket when he was at the station… Where was it now? Still in the charred ruins of that building? Had they recovered his body yet? Had his mom heard by now?...

The pressure behind his eyes got worse, more and more uncomfortable. Just as he was about to go back, he saw a dark gap between all the white ones maybe thirty steps ahead of him.

He rushed towards the dark metal door, his feet hitting the ground without noise. The lanyard came of in a blink when he saw the unassuming lock beneath the plastic handle. Taiga placed the key’s tip in the hole and shov–..! It didn’t fit.

“Dammit!”

A loud bang and a creak sounded when he punched the metal in frustration and the door fell open. It hadn’t been locked in the first place he realized when he grabbed the handle and tore it open. Waiting for him on the other side, was daylight and a quiet backstreet.

Quickly, he moved through the frame, and immediately stepped into a puddle on the other side. He cursed his stupid slippers that were now soaked in dirty water.

“Well, _fuck_ me…”

Taiga halted all motion. That voice… it was familiar. When he turned to his side, he staggered backwards until he was pressed against the door again. Next to him, a tall, dark-skinned man in a black body warmer was leaning face first against the wall, one hand on his hips, the other covering his eyes, the top of his middle and index finger disappearing into strands of midnight blue hair.

“You?!” Taiga could not believe this.

“Heh,” Aomine Daiki said dryly, “I hope we’re both waiting for somebody else.” He left the wall and walked in a little circle, his hands pressed over his mouth. When he eventually turned around he seemed upset but not particularly hostile, and when he told Taiga to give him the envelope Taiga didn’t object, glad to have one less thing to worry about. The envelope was ripped open and landed in the puddle at their feet, as the reaper went through the folder.

“Yup, you’re my new fucking apprentice. _Un_ believable these people.”

Maybe it was the fact that he had woken up from a wholesome slumber not too long ago, or maybe because his eyes were hurting, his feet were wet, and he was standing on a chilly street in pajamas. Maybe that bitter tasting tea from that sweet looking file clerk somehow soothed his temper, or maybe he was just glad to be out of the eerie hallway. Whatever it was, it seemed to give Taiga the presence of mind to take a deep breath, suppress his anger, and calmly tell this man: “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Before he took a big step out of the puddle and started walking towards the main street.

The reaper seemed to be surprised as well, staring after him before shaking his head and quickly running after him. “No dude, I’m responsible for you now, you gotta come with me!”

Taiga glared straight ahead, increasing his pace. “Don’t talk to me, I’m going home.”

Perplexed, the stranger, who Taiga would strictly ignore in order for him to remain just that, asked him what he thought he was doing, but Taiga didn’t answer. Instead he fiercely clutched the bag to his chest, and powerwalked down the street, having only his apartment with his shoes and his aspirin and his door, sparing him from all the rest of the world, in mind.

Taiga didn’t stop when he didn’t recognize any of the buildings around him, reckoning the faster he walked, the faster he would see something that was familiar to him. He could hear footsteps following him, but he decided if the stranger coincidentally wanted to go for a walk directly behind Taiga, it wasn’t actually any of his business and he wouldn’t worry himself about it. Not today. No way in h-… No way.

As he kept walking, he tried to ignore the missing traffic and the skyscrapers and huge apartment complexes that looked too old and too crooked.

When he saw the uncanny grey sky that bore no sign of clouds and hung awfully low, he simply concluded that the city’s pollution must have gotten a lot worse since his sudden and tragic demise.

He ignored the silence that was eerie and wrong for Tokyo.

After a few hundred meters more spent actively not looking at his surroundings, the stranger’s step closely following, Taiga had to stop.

He looked up at the upper half of a multistoried building. It had broken off from its lower half, and was now only prevented from floating away by two massive iron chains. Debris was floating in the gap between the floors that used to be connected at some point and someone seemed to be airing their bedsheets from one of the windows up high, just above the rapture.

He turned around to blankly stare at the stranger, who was glaring at the building as well. “Gravity went out in the upper floors over a year ago,” he shrugged. “Down here it takes people forever to fix shit.”

“Uh-huh,” Taiga said lamely. 

Maybe he was dreaming, or in a coma or something. His mind was making this up to distract him from the horrible burns he must have sustained if he indeed survived. He supposed he was lucky. If his brain was still able to conjure up something like this that meant the damage couldn’t be too devastating, right? Or maybe it meant exactly that? And it didn’t feel like a dream, either. Everything felt so real. If this was a dream he had no way of telling where it began. This felt as valid as the waiting room had, which in turn had felt as real as taking the subway and getting into a fist fight with a goddamn grim reaper. That again had felt as real as anything he’d ever experienced before, even realer than some things. 

“Wow, ha, I haven’t been to this part of Tokyo before,” he could hear himself sounding hysterical, “which way is Shimbashi Station? Are we closer to Shinagawa?” he asked, unsure of whether he wanted to hear the answer.

The stranger shook his head. “We aren’t even in Japan right now, this is Limbo.”

Taiga closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. He would will himself to wake up.

“And like I said – “ wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!  “– some asswipe decided I’m your new baby sitter.”

Taiga flashed his eyes at the man. Couldn’t anybody give him a break for once? Especially this guy, who had started this mess in the first place! Taiga remembered how their ways parted the last time they met, and he felt an itch in his fists.

“Don’t look at me like that.” The reaper snapped. “I didn’t ask for this either! I was hoping for a hot chick with a nice rack, not some asshole with fucked eyebrows and anger issues.”

Taiga clenched his teeth, heat spreading through his body. Who did this smug bastard think he was, talking to him like this?

“I already showed you last time I’ll take you on, so stop pissing me off,” Taiga growled.

“Are you gonna take off your granny slippers and slap me across the face with them?” The stranger taunted before he waved the folder in front of Taiga’s face. “This says you’re Kagami. My name’s Aomine.”

He looked at Taiga’s sour expression, his balled fists, his drenched shoes, and rolled his eyes. “Come on. Let’s just get the fuck outta here,” he sighed and turned around, heading back the way they came.

Taiga contemplated not following for a moment. When a gust of wind blew cold air underneath his shirt and made the iron chains behind him rattle and clink, he reached for the chain with Tatsuya’s ring on his neck. His fingers connected with his chest without anything being there to hold on for courage. Reluctantly, he followed Aomine Daiki’s steps.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clink.

The rustle of his rain coat when he bent down and tried again.

Clink. The coins fell right through.

“It’s broken.”

The little figure’s head whipped around to stare at Kuroo with big golden eyes.

“The machine. I already tried earlier.”

Kozume’s eyes wandered up and down Kuroo’s shape twice, avoiding eye contact both times. He bent down again to retrieve the money, then pulled up is hood almost as if to hide himself, and looked down at Kuroo’s shoes.

“Oh..”

“Tell you what, take me outside with you and we’ll get a coffee together. I have yen, my treat.”

Kozume’s head jerked a little, his expression perplexed, yet he still wouldn’t look him in the eyes. _Daww, confidence, kiddo_.

“You are a reaper, right?” Kuroo motioned to the ring at Kozume’s right hand, which thereupon quickly disappeared in his pocket. Kuroo felt a tingle in his gums and chest. Kozume’s aloofness was frustrating in a very satisfying way. He wanted to grab his face and force him to look at him.

“’m not supposed to.”

His voice was deeper than Kuroo had imagined, but pleasant.

“Man… I’d do anything to be able to leave this place. Even just for a couple of hours… Don’t you feel the same?”

Finally, Kozume looked up at him. Very briefly, just a quick dart, but Kuroo knew that once they looked him in the eyes they were lost. His forever.

“I won’t tell. Promise.”

Kozume having the nerve to press his lips together and frown at Kuroo’s suave wink, chipped at his ego just a little bit, but at least that hesitant golden glance was on him now.

“Maybe I can even help you a little. I’m usually pretty good with people, you know?”

Kozume seemed to actually consider it now.

“Mh. fine but… Don’t get me into trouble, okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Kuroo smiled widely.

“The portal’s this way,” Kozume mumbled, and started to tread away without further ado.

His shorter legs could evidently carry him much quicker than usual when he was uncomfortable. Kuroo dodged puddles and jumped from dry spot to spot as he hurried to keep up with him until they reached the roofed walkway and Kozume slowed down.

“I’m Kuroo by the way,” he said, as he silently forced Kozume to move to the side enough so that they could walk next to each other. He could see him holding on to his console in the deep pockets of his coat.

“Kenma.” _First-name basis, huh? Slow down there, lover boy._

“Pleasure to meet you. What’s your usual region?”

“Nagano, Gifu, and Yamanashi mostly. Sometimes Niigata and Shizuoka.”

“Chūbu, eh?”

They were already passing the courtyard. Not too far anymore.

“You ever get sent to Tokyo?” Kuroo couldn’t help but ask. “I’d love to be back some day.”

It was the truth. Since his death, Kuroo could count the times he’d been able to leave the Afterlife on two hands. None of those occasions had allowed him to revisit the place where he’d been born and buried.

“No,” Kozume answered quietly, “I’m from Tokyo myself.”

“Really?”

“Mh-hm. I don’t expect to ever be let back there.”

“Yeah, no chance.”

Once you were dead, it was strictly forbidden to ever go near your hometown again. Even, and especially for reapers. Someone might recognize you, you might recognize someone, or get sentimental and not return to where you belonged now. To whom you belonged now.

Kuroo realized Kozume had stopped a few steps back at an easily overlooked arch between the pillars of the walkway.

“Is that it?”

Kozume nodded. Kuroo quickly walked back and stood behind Kozume as he held out his right hand into the empty space of the arch. The rain on the other side grew blurry and the air inside the oval seemed to congeal until it looked like Kozume’s hand was resting on top an elastic see-through curtain. Kuroo’s eyes were trained on Kozume’s ring finger. Incredible what a bit of ornate metal could do…

Without a word, Kozume grabbed Kuroo’s arm a pulled him along as he stepped through the portal.

The first change Kuroo noticed, was the sunlight. The second was that it wasn’t raining anymore, but damn was it fucking humid. He immediately felt himself getting sticky and gross.

“Nakatsugawa,” came the answer to his unspoken question. “Gifu Prefecture.”

They were standing behind a car in a little driveway in a quiet neighborhood. Kuroo could see the mountains surrounding them on all sides in the distance. They seemed almost as far away as the sky above them. He took a deep breath. Even through the humidity he felt like he could smell a thousand different things. Earth, grass, somebody cooking. He could taste the electricity in the air, buzzing between the many transmission tower cables above the street. He crouched down to touch the warm asphalt and feel the car’s tires. An ant was crawling by his feet and he pressed down a finger to let it walk across it. The World of the Living and Limbo, life and death, night and day. He let out an incredulous laugh.

“How long has it been?”

Kuroo had almost forgotten he was on a mission with his target right in front of him.

“Too long,” he shook his head as he got up. “Where to?”

Kozume, who had gotten out his reaper’s notepad, motioned to the house they were standing next to.

“Inside.”

The soul they were looking for belonged to an old lady who had fatally tripped in the kitchen on the first floor.  She had been alone in the house. The soul was sleeping at a table on the second floor. An old calico cat was sitting in her lap, purring. When Kozume approached the woman, Kuroo following close by, it meowed and flit away under a cushioned bench by the wall. Kuroo watched in silence as Kozume pulled out a treat from his coat and held it up for the cat. When it didn’t react, he sighed and turned back to the woman. He reached out with his right hand and placed it firmly on the sleeping woman’s shoulder. Nothing seemed to happen for a few moments as Kuroo and the cat both attentively watched the scene. Then, the woman’s shape seemed to quiver. She turned translucent and a ripple went through her outline. Then she was gone.

The cat came out from its hiding spot and meowed at the empty chair. Kuroo wondered whether its seat would be warm or not, but didn’t move to check. He didn’t speak up again until they were back in the driveway and Kozume was leading them to the door of a building that was something between a garage and a shed.

“Wow.”

Kozume just shrugged.

“The next one is in the mountains east of here.”

Since there was no direct access to the forest area where the next soul was waiting, they had to teleport to an abandoned building by the roadside and then hike up quite a ways.

It was hot, humid, and fucking exhausting to wander uphill through the brush. The midday sun was slowly coming out, too, and even though they were in the shade Kuroo was sweating his balls off.

“And you gotta do this every day?” he huffed as he took off his jacket and tied the arms around his waist.

Kozume shook his head.

“Normally they don’t stay where it happens. They go back home or – I think this one might be… upset.”

The way he said it made Kuroo wonder. It sounded almost as though he was nervous, afraid.

“Who is it?”

“A girl, high schooler. Broke her neck.”

Kuroo looked around. They were now pretty deep into the forest and even looking downhill, he couldn’t see the street they had started from anymore. He listened to the silence of the forest.

“I wonder how the reapers in Hokkaido do it.”

Kozume looked at him, questioningly. It seemed like from afar, he didn’t have that big a problem with direct eye contact.

“They have bears and stuff,” he explained. “In Aomori, too.”

He wasn’t graced with a response, Kozume just kept walking.

“What’s the most dange-“

A cry.

Far off, but unmistakable.

Kozume tilted his head knowingly at him and they picked up their pace.

The crying and screaming grew louder and louder and there, finally, Kuroo could see two small shapes on the ground ahead of them. He stopped to observe.

A young girl was lying motionless on the forest floor. She was dirty. Brown and green stains were blemishing her hands, and legs, as well as her clothes. Her hair was a mess. Above her, what looked like the same girl, was kneeling by her side. She was shaking her own dead body, tears falling down on herself as she was begging herself to get up.

“What’s the pla-,“ Kuroo stopped talking when he saw how pale Kozume had gotten. His eyes were wide and glued to the crying girl, fists clenched, mouth a taut line. He didn’t seem to have a plan for dealing with distraught teenage girls bawling their eyes out when confronted with their own, crass mortality. Socially apt as he seemed? No wonder.

Kuroo stepped ahead towards the two girls.

“I’m here to help.”

The girl sprang to her feet mid-sob.

“P-please,” heart-wrenching really, “d-do something.”

“Shhh, I know,” Kuroo stepped close to the dead body and crouched down. He held two fingers to her neck.

“There’s still a pulse, I think you’ll be okay.”

“Y-Ye-ah?” the girl coughed wetly and kneeled down next to Kuroo. “I, I can’t look, I-“ A new stream of tears gushed over her reddened cheeks.

“I know, I know,” Kuroo reached out his hands, and she readily fell into his arms. “I already called an ambulance. You’ll be okay, yeah? What’s your name?”

But she couldn’t answer him, having broken out into convulsive sobbing as soon as his arms were closed around her.

“There, there,” he murmured, as he turned his head and motioned for Kozume to come over.

Having watched Kuroo as if stupefied, Kozume shook awake and quickly came closer.

“I can’t do it when she’s like this,” he said quietly, so that the girl couldn’t hear him over her sobs.

Kuroo nodded. He started slowly rocking back and forth with the crying girl still held closely to his chest, and hummed a melody he made up as he went until her sobs got more controlled and were finally reduced to quiet tears rolling down her face.

“Shhh, it’s alright now, you’re okay. What’s your name?” He asked again.

“Shi-Shinobu,” she hickuped. Over her shoulders Kozume nodded at him and reached out his hand.

“What a lovely name, Shinobu. I’m Kuroo. My friend Kozume here will check if you’re injured, okay? Just stay with me like this.”

She turned her head to press her wet face into Kuroo’s neck as he rubbed her back. He felt her becoming lighter. What he could see of her turned translucent, then a ripple, then she was gone. His chest was cold.

He sank down on his butt and let his arms fly out behind him to support him.

“Phew….”

Kozume kneeled down across from him, the girl’s corpse between them.

“Um. Thank you.”

Kuroo looked at him. He had his arms slung around him, his gaze avoiding Kuroo’s eyes just as much as the dead girl in front of him.

“That would’ve been difficult. I’m really bad with stuff like this.”

“Well if there’s one thing I love, it’s being owed favors.” This time Kuroo’s grin was much more subtle than usual. There was still a dead child right there between them, after all.

He got up and reached out a hand to help Kozume get up. He didn’t take it.

“So… Coffee?”

 

Kozume had six more souls on his list for today, it turned out. In all three cases, he readily let Kuroo “assist him with” (read: do all) the approaching and calming of the souls, before they were steady enough to be send to the great beyond. Kuroo felt like fist bumping the air after Kozume told him they were ahead of schedule because of him and gave him a shy little smile. Sweet, sweet victory. He was the best, he knew it. He could crack any shell within hours, he - wasn’t letting himself get distracted.

That was easier said than done, though. The coffee shop Kozume lead them to was somewhere in south Yamanashi. They could see Mount Fuji in the distance from where they were sitting by the window. Kozume had walked straight to a seating area next to a power outlet so that he was able to charge his PSP while sitting.

Sure, Mount Fuji was beautiful as ever, as were the red maple leaves and pagodas and temples they had seen during their trip, but they were just as they had been during Kuroo’s lifetime so many decades ago. What really got him excited where the people, the shops, the lights and signs, the traffic! It was amazing.

Alas, he had to focus on Kozume. Not that he was a shabby sight by far.

“Are you hungry?”

A shrug.

Kuroo looked at the menu.

“Well, they only have snacks here, anyway. You want a sandwich or cake? My treat like I said.”

They both got coffee while Kuroo ordered mitsumame, a type of dessert made of jelly and pieces of fruit, for Kozume and a ham sandwich for himself. They started eating.

“So, crying teenagers aren’t your forte?” Kuroo asked after a while.

Kozume, who had been contently picking apart the cubes of jelly in his bowl, stopped and looked at the ring on his finger.

“I hate it. Every day I’m… miserable. I’m no good at consoling people, it makes me feel _stupid_. “

Kuroo didn’t say a word. He hadn’t expected Kozume to get so personal so fast.

“Back in the forest,” Kozume continued and looked up from his hand, “you said ‘my friend Kozume’.”

Kuroo felt his heart beating faster in his chest.

“I never told you my last name.”

The way Kozume looked at him now, straight in the eyes, unafraid and wary, made him hold in his breath. He had to stop himself from looking too eager. The game was on, and Kozume turned out to be smarter than he had thought to give him credit for. Smart players were fun, but dangerous.

_Not so low-hanging a fruit after all, it looks like._

“You didn’t know I’m a reaper just because of this ring, did you? And I’ve seen you around before, sitting in the courtyard. Who are you?”

My, my. Had Kuroo gotten this sluggish or was the kid this good?

“And what do you want from me?”

Ahh, decisions decisions. If he fed him more bullshit now, he might very well look through it all and leave him stranded here, but telling the truth wasn’t an option, either. As wasn’t failure.

“So you _are_ able to say more than one sentence at a time, huh? Keep it up, I like it.”

Kozume’s face scrunched up and he looked back down at his food again. Kuroo shouldn’t find childishness this cute. Sure, he was a piece of dirt, but he hadn’t become that despicable yet, had he.

“I want you to switch sides, sugar pie. Leave the reaping behind and work for me. With me.”

“That’s – I applied for a transfer three times. It’s not possible.”

 “You’ve been dead for how long now? A little over a year? And by yourself for what, less than five months?”

Kozume nodded.

“You haven’t left a long paper trail yet. No track record to speak of. I can make you disappear just like that,” he snapped his fingers.

"But if they find out - if I'm caught..."

“Nah, nah, nah. You see, I'm the very best at this job. No one's gonna come looking for you. And besides, you're dead already, sunshine. Fuck the system."

Kozume shrank back in his chair when he leaned in closer. He knew he could come off a little intimidating sometimes, but he couldn't help it right now.

"I’ll bend a few rules for you, sweetheart, and in return you’ll do what I tell you to, yeah?”

Of course, that wasn’t quite how it was supposed to go. Kuroo was just as much a pawn in the boss’s hands as Kozume would soon be, and then he would answer to him not to Kuroo. But damn if this wasn't fucking exhilarating. The thrill of the chase, the wild satisfaction of defiance. He could feel the heat and tension growing in his muscles when he grabbed Kozume's hand, silently coaxing him just with the intensity of his eyes.

For a moment, Kozume looked at him with an expression that he couldn’t read, and he felt like all was lost. Had he given away too much? Been too eager? Cold sweat. His heart stood still. 

Kozume pulled out his hand from underneath his and bent down to unplugg his PSP.

“Okay.”

Kuroo stared at him as he neatly wrapped up the cable and put it in his pocket.

“'Okay'?”

“Yes, let's go.”

“G-, Ri-, Now?!”

Kozume got up, padded down his rain coat and pulled up his hood.

"Y'don’t want any details? No questions? You-"

“Tell me on the way. Can we, uh, can I pick up my games? From home?”

A  wind was blowing through Kuroo's brain. It _whoosed_ as he put down the money on the table, completely dumbfounded.  

“Whatever you need, angel eyes," he muttered, as if on auto-pilot.

When Kozume shot him an annoyed look but didn't say anything else, he had to chuckle. The emptiness in his head lessened. This was okay. Great actually. A few unexpected turns were part of the job. All the better if this went quicker than anticipated. 

"Whatever you need."

_Challenge accepted._

 

The trip back to Limbo and to Kozume’s sad little apartment went smoothly. While they went. Kuroo explained more of what their new arrangement would entail. They would skip the step of Kozume having to send souls off himself. Instead, he would already wait for them in Hell, and help Imayoshi’s people transfer the soul energy to where they wanted it. It would be a comfortable 9 to 5 job, no extensive demonstrations of empathy and tact needed, he promised.

“It’s not that I don’t have empathy!” Kozume’s voice came from inside as Kuroo was standing outside the closed apartment door. Kozume had insisted he wait in the hallway.

“No worries, buttercup,” he was still testing out what pet name he liked best. “I bet you’re plenty compassionate.”

When the door finally reopened Kozume had packed a backpack and had put on a red strapback hat. _Adorable_.

“…Anyways,” he continued, “since this is all going much quicker that I thought, you’re gonna stay at my boss’s boss, Ukai’s place. We call him Coach. He run’s a store where you can help out a little. Right now, he takes care of most of the money laundering. It’s basically an all cash business, you know?”

Kozume gave off quiet hum. Kuroo considered the dyed blond strands that were peeking out from beneath his hat.

“I think he’s gonna like you right away.”

 

It took Kuroo about an hour to navigate them out of the rainy realm to the one Ukai’s shop was located. As for travel within Limbo, a reaper’s powers weren’t necessary, so Kuroo led the way. They didn’t talk much, but since he was satisfied with the level of rapport he’d been able to build in just this one day, he didn’t press it.

It was starting to get dark when they eventually reached the store. Unassuming, but welcoming from the outside, highly efficient and lucrative on the inside, the Sakanoshita’s family business was well-run and in skilled hands. The bell rang when Kuroo stepped inside, Kozume close on his heels.

“But Coach!”

“I already told you ‘no’, Hayama. Now take the damn boxes and get out of my sight before- “

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Kuroo sang, and the two men at the counter turned to look at them.

“Kuroo!!” Hayama waved excitedly. Kuroo could feel Kozume retreating behind his back. _Yeah_ , he thought as he nodded back, Hayama was an acquired taste even for other extroverts. Case in point was “Coach” Ukai Keishin, who seemed as choleric as ever when dealing with the energetic mover.

“Kuroo. I wasn’t expecting you, yet” he ran a hand through his hair in exasperation, and turned back to Hayama. “Get. Them. Now!”

Huffing and grumbling, Hayama went in the back behind the counter where they could hear him going through and stacking up boxes of merchandise.

“Who’s this?” Ukai asked, as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a match.

Kuroo stepped closer and to the side so that Ukai could get a better look at Kozume.

“This is Kozume – “

“Kenma.”

“– he’s gonna help around the store for a couple of weeks. You can bring him under, right?”

Ukai took a long drag and turned his head up to blow the smoke out above their heads. There was a loud shatter and a curse in the backroom. He sighed deeply.

“Yeah… yeah, consider yourselves lucky. Hayama is quitting today.”

“What?!” Came a muffled shout, then more clattering and cursing.

“Kenma, hm,” he gave him the once over. “I like your hair.”

“Yours too,” came the reply.

Ukai chuckled around the cigarette between his lips.

"A man of few words. I can appreciate that. This shock-headed loser been bugging you?”

“Quite a bit actually,” Kuroo grinned. Ukai turned his attention back to him and immediately started frowning again.

“Well, don’t overdo it, boy. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ukai tsked, but nodded towards a door further down the aisles. “Show him the storage room today, and then get out of here. I don’t want any more of you lot loafing around. Kenma, there’s a bed for you upstairs. Hayama will show you when he’s done.”

With that he dismissed them and followed Hayama to the back. Kuroo pulled Kozume towards the door and pushed him into the dark storage room by the shoulders before the arguing started again.

He hit the light switch and closed the door behind them. The naked bulb sprang on with a scratchy flicker and bathed them in flimsy lighting. There were a couple of rows of metal shelves that held more boxes, tools and cleaning supplies.

“In there,” he pointed at a carton on the middle shelf, “are shirts. The uniform. Pick one that fits and you can take it upstairs with you. There should be another apron in the back by the register.”

They moved a little bit further into the cramped space, Kuroo right behind Kozume, as he showed him around. “There’s a sink behind that chair,” he moved it so that Kozume could see. “And right here,” he took a step and pointed to the wall next to the washer and dryer set to reveal a power outlet, “you can charge your video game.”

“Wow,” Kozume breathed as he stepped closer to see it with his own eyes.

“Over there’s a bucket and a mop, there’s soap under the sink, too.”

Leaning down and marveling at the slits in the wall, Kozume hadn’t noticed how close they were standing. When he got up and realized their chests were almost touching, as the two of them were squeezed in together between the wall and a shelf, he jumped a little.

“This is great,” he was looking up at him. Clearly nervous but happy. “Really, Kuroo-san. Thank you.”

That was the first time he’d said his name. Kuroo looked at the shadow his towering shape was casting over Kozume’s face. There were muffled voices arguing outside in the shop,

“You were supposed to get them ready to go  _yesterday_  you big – “

but he ignored them, honing all his senses in on the little guy in front of him. Kozume was watching him, eyes unsure, mouth slightly opened, chest rising and falling... Mhm, there it was again, that sweet rush of power flushing through him. Kozume had put his faith in him, his hopes. He’d taken a leap in trusting Kuroo and coming here, hoping for a change in his miserable existence. The way he relied on him now... it made Kuroo's cock ache.

He inched closer until Kozume’s back hit the shelf.

"This okay with you?"

“Hm?” Without him even saying a real word, Kuroo was able to pick out the shakiness in his voice.

“Mopping floors, stocking shelves…” he let his eyes wander slowly across Kozume’s face, his body...

“Yes! Absolutely,” Kozume insisted. “Anything’s better than…”

He wasn’t listening. How hadn't Kozume caught on yet? Was he trying to blabber himself out of here? Kuroo would feel pity if he wasn’t getting off on this. He reached out a hand towards Kozume’s face but stopped himself before he made contact. _J_ _ust a bit longer._

“I’m glad you think so, but talk," Kuroo’s voice was smooth like butter, "is cheap don't you think? If you really do feel grateful for this, I’d love for you to show me sometime.”

Kozume’s face was pale now. He tried to look down at their shoes again, but seemed to lose even more color when he saw Kuroo was hard. His eyes went wide and darted to the side, but Kuroo had already moved his body to block Kozume's view of the door. Kozume's breaths sped up, almost loud in their shared silence.

The trick to a fight-or-flight response? Kuroo smiled to himself as he unbuckled his belt: Timing. Kozume's was terrible, much too late.

“Come on, lover.” His touch was gentle when he held up Kozume's chin and brushed a finger over his lips. "I'll guide you through if you don’t know how.”

It turned out he did know how. While enthusiasm looked different, Kuroo had had worse from more willing partners. He didn’t make use of his hands, they were pressed against Kuroo’s thighs to keep him from going too fast and his eyes were pressed shut, but at least no teeth.

Kuroo leaned back against the wall while one of his hands held on to the shelf, the other gripping the hair that fell in Kozume’s eyes. So sweet cheeks here really did fuck men. Or maybe he was just a natural? Eiher way, Kuroo was getting close fast. How long had he waited for this? Two weeks of stalking and getting soaked to his damn boxers were totally worth this. He moved the hand in his hair further down his head to pull him closer and moaned when Kozume coughed around his cock.

“Yeah babe, just like that.”

Once upon a time, Kuroo used to feel guilty, sort of, but honestly? Who didn't steal food or office supplies from their job or,

“ _Fuck_.”

or entered whole vacations as company trips in the books. What Kuroo did was just, just making people comply in ways a little more intimate than totally necessary. No debilitating harm, no foul you couldn’t live with. Not like he ever held anybody down and forced them to take it. Most of the time they ended up liking it anyways. Missing it even. This was no different than stealing staplers.

He grunted as he came in Kozume's mouth.

Maybe a _little_ different.

He looked down at Kozume who was kneeling in front of him, hair messy, hand pressed over his mouth in shock. Hopelessly lost at sea. Right then and there, Kuroo decided he would fish him out and Kozume would come to love him for it.

“The sink, kitten.”

He jumped up and stumbled across the room. Kuroo tucked himself in and buttoned up his pants while he listened to the sounds of Kozume spitting and rinsing his mouth. Right about now, taking a nap upstairs sounded dandy, but he knew Coach wouldn’t have any of it, and he should give the boss a call anyway. He didn’t like whenever Ukai was better and sooner informed than him about the dealings of his direct underlings. Kuroo wouldn’t fault him for that. They shared somewhat of a penchant for control, the boss and him...

He pushed himself away from the wall and turned around. Kozume was still standing by the sink, but was turned towards him now. He was still breathing hard, fists clenched but not quite raised. His lips shone red, his chin was wet. Kuroo could see the humiliation burning in his face and frowned. He disliked it when things turned sour, especially this fast. When Kozume spoke, his eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere below Kuroo’s chin.

“It's Kenma,” he croaked and had to harrumph, “Stop it with the stupid nicknames.”

What was this?

A blink of an eye passed.

Nothing.

Kuroo hadn’t meant to overstep his bounds or come off as obnoxious.

“Um, sorry. I'll stop.”

Ko-, Kenma then, he let his eyes drop and nodded to the ground. Kuroo watched him closely to see whether he would see tears falling, but he seemed to be waiting in vain.  _Attaboy._

He walked towards the door. Kenma who must’ve thought he was ready for round two shrank back against the sink. Kuroo suppressed a grimace. He would have to give the kid some time to come to terms with it.

He put a hand on the door handle.

“There should be some toothpaste in one of the boxes too, if you feel the need. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He closed the door behind him and squinted when he stepped back into the brighter light of the shop floor. He nodded his goodbyes to Ukai and Hayama who were still quarreling and stepped out into the night.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maaaan this chapter turned out so much longer that i thought it would. Next chapter we'll have Aomine and Kagami settle in together, and hopefully Daichi will finally show up.
> 
> Leave a comment if you wanna make my life more joyful ༼☯﹏☯༽


End file.
